cascades default to 0 when using extended rels

[dbsrgits/DBIx-Class.git] / BRANCH

How to allow custom relations:

* add_relationship is augmented to accept a coderef in addition to the
traditional { foreign... => self... } hashref to specify an ON join
condition. The coderef's signature is:

my ( $me_alias, $rel_alias, $me_result_source, $rel_name, $optional_me_object ) = @_;

Normally a condition can be constructed using only the first 2 arguments
(i.e. { "$left_alias.colA" => { '>', \"$right_alias.colB" } } ).

The next two arguments are supplied in case the coderef wants to do something
clever. Having the result source and the corresponding rel-name (name, not
alias) - one has access to virtually the entire DBIC object structure,
including a raw $dbh (but don't do that)

The last argument is supplied in cases like $row_obj->custom_relationship
and *may* be used as an optimization path, see discussion of return values
below.


The coderef is expected to return one or two values
  ($on_as_where, $vals_from_related):

- an *SQLA* where-clause compatible structure (this implies that
  t1.cola = t2.colb must be written as { t1.cola => \'t2.colb' }).
  There are plans to introduce an -ident => 'string' SQLAHacks
  operator to make the \'column' unnecessary (and allow proper
  quoting when needed). The DBIC-SQLA shim is then augmented to
  recognize such conditions, and pass them through _recurse_where
  in order to produce the final textual ON clause (folding whatever
  bind values at the proper places)

- an OPTIONAL hashref of resolved values, when an $optional_me_object
  is supplied to the coderef. This is the data that will be used to
  make $some_row_obj->set_from_related ($another_obj) work, and also
  to optimise $row_obj->relationship calls, by avoiding a full-join
  and instead constructing a WHERE clause with the contents of said
  hashref
  (Note - such rel-to-ident resolution is currently possible for *all*
  DBIC relationships, but can not be guaranteed for all custom rels
  possible via this syntax. Thus the escape hatch of a *mandatory*
  ON clause, which can be used to construct a full-blown JOIN even in
  the $obj->rel case


Why the complexity of two RVs - custom rels are generally simplifiable
right?

This is generally true, except when it isn't. The main issue is that a
coderef is blackbox, and we want to keep it this way for simplicity.
This means that no state is communicate from DBIC to the coderef (except
for the optional row-obj), and no state is communicated out when the
coderef returns (i.e. you can use this hashref for real joins but not for
set_from_related).

Here are a couple of edge cases when it is crucial to know if we have
a return value for a specific scenario

- Given a relationship
    { 'artist.name' => { '!=', 'bob' }, 'artist.id' => \'cds.artistid' }
  we *have* to do a full join when doing $artist->cds, as this is the
  only way to evaluate the artist.name condition. For this we need a
  defined $on_as_where, but a missing $vals_from_related, which will
  signal the need to wrap a full query

- Given the same relationship as above, we want
  $new_cd->set_from_related($artist) to do the right thing depending
  on the name of $artist - the coderef would be tasked to return
  { artistid => xxx } or {} depending on the value of $artist->name


What needs to be adjusted (non-exhaustive summary):

* $obj->create_related is implemented on top of search_related and
  set_from_related. While search_related will always work, the other
  may not as discussed above

* Relationships definitions are treated as fully-introdspectable structures
  and multiple codepaths expect _resolve_condition to always return something
  akin to $vals_from_related above. A grep for _resolve_condition will
  highlight the problematic use-cases

Additional Note:

When using extended_rels all cascade options default to 0.